Abstract
'The obsession of other thing is terror.' James was a framer of epigraphs which may or may not stand for his deepest beliefs. But it is possible that in this one we have at least t-he beginning of an approach to that exceedingly difficult and puzzling short fiction, The Sacred Fount, a work which has only recently been emerging from limbo in which it has existed since its publication in 1901. For The Sacred Fount is as near as James ever came to expressing in one place a theory of art and a theory of morality and a theory of love. The summum bonum of Jamesian morality revolves about two words Life and Freedom-often used in special senses in both James's fiction and his criticism-and may best be expressed by phrase: A rich life freely lived. This can be demonstrated by reference to those characters who, obsessed with the other thing, fail in life (such as John Marcher in The Beast in Jungle, or early Strether, or little bookbinder Hyacinth Robinson,
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